Rising Fury: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 12)

by Wayne Stinnett

  “The dead woman on the boat was Charlotte Richmond, of Beaufort, South Carolina. I used to date her sister, a long time ago.”

  “Knew the first,” she said. “Didn’t know the last part, though. My condolences.”

  “I want to see if you can come up with any connection between Charlotte and this Ballinger guy. She was the daughter of Jackson Richmond, who owns a fleet of commercial fishing boats up in South Carolina.”

  “I’ll see what I can find out,” she replied. “It’s a slow day. I was just about to run down to the café for coffee and donuts. I’ll call you back when I find something. Um, one thing.”

  “Right now, it’s pro bono,” I said, anticipating the question. “There might be a payday at the end of it, there might not.”

  “I wonder if we’re thinking the same kinda payday. You having history with the dead woman’s sister and what all.”

  “The family is wealthy,” I said. “If we can find out why she died, the parents might be generous.”

  “Uh huh.”

  I thanked her, put my phone on the table, and continued eating. The eggs were good and the bacon crunchy, but the sound it made echoed inside my head as I chewed.

  When the food was gone, I asked the waitress to bring me more coffee. A moment later, she refilled my cup and presented me with the check. “Whenever you’re ready,” she said, and started to turn away.

  “Wait,” I said, digging into my wallet. The breakfast bill was just under twenty dollars. I handed her two twenties and said, “Keep the change. And can you leave the pot?”

  She smiled and folded the bills, along with the cash register receipt into the pocket of her apron. “It’ll get cold. But I have a thermos under the counter. I’ll fill it for you.”

  Though there weren’t any other people on the deck, I like to pay rent if I’m going to occupy a table for a while. It’s only fair. And in my experience, people will usually respond in a favorable way when you treat them fair.

  My phone vibrated on the table. I picked it up and saw that it was Rusty. I was about to answer it, but thought better of the idea. Rusty and I go way back. He probably knows me better than anyone, and he’d know I was up to something.

  So I ignored the call. A moment later, he called again. I ignored that one, too. If it was important, he’d leave a message.

  What am I up to, I thought. If Savannah came here, was I just going to motor out to her boat, thinking we could just pick up where we’d left off nine years ago? Was my only reason for being here out of curiosity over her sister’s death and drug dealers being in my backyard?

  Devon and I had a good thing. We didn’t pretend to be anything we weren’t. But was what we had everything there was?

  My late wife Alex had been everything I wanted. Devon wasn’t Alex. Nor was Savannah.

  Did we only get one single shot at the so-called everything?

  Another moment went by and my phone pinged the alert tone for a voicemail. I played the message. Bro, call me when you get this. Savannah is here at the Anchor.

  Minutes later, I steered El Cazador past the remnants of the old bridge to Boot Key and turned south, bringing her up on top of the water. I rounded Sister Rock, then slowed as I neared the entrance to Rusty’s channel. I could see Savannah’s Grand Banks trawler docked just ahead.

  After tying off, I was momentarily distracted when I saw Kim’s car parked outside, Marty’s pickup next to it. My heart skipped a beat. She should be back in Gainesville by now.

  When I opened the door, I almost ran into Kim coming out. “I thought you left yesterday.”

  “Hey, Dad,” she said, giving me a hug. I winced slightly. “Are you okay?”

  “Just a little stiff in the joints,” I said. “It sucks getting old. Why aren’t you in Gainesville?”

  “It’s finals week, no class today. I was just about to leave, so I could study for tomorrow’s exam.”

  I stepped back away from the door and she and Marty came outside. “Did you come back to the island last night?”

  Marty stepped slightly away, looking off toward his pickup in the parking lot.

  “No, Dad,” Kim said. “I didn’t stay on the island last night.”

  The realization hit me. The years that I’d missed as she and her sister were growing up were unrecoverable. Her sister, Eve had turned six, just a few days after my first wife left me, taking the girls with her. I’d been deployed to Panama. Kim had been just five months old. She was her own woman now and could make decisions on her own.

  “Well, be careful, okay?” I said. “And kill it on the exams.”

  She kissed my cheek and Marty walked her over to her car. I turned and went inside. Rusty was sitting at a table in the corner with Savannah and her daughter.

  As I approached, Rusty got to his feet. “Would it be okay if Flo showed me your boat?”

  Savannah smiled up at him and nodded. After they left, I straddled the chair he’d vacated and watched them walk across the yard. The big Rottweiler trotted along between him and Florence.

  “Your dog won’t eat my friend, will it?”

  “Woden wouldn’t hurt anyone,” Savannah replied. “Unless Flo or I told him to.”

  “I was over in Boot Key Harbor for the last hour,” I said.

  She smiled. “No place to moor there and the bottom gets my anchor locker all muddy. So I came here. Drove straight through the night.” Her smile faded. “Do you know something about my sister’s death? Because I saw your name on a report in the coroner’s office.”

  “What happened with Charlotte?” I asked.

  Savannah looked off toward the docks. “She had trouble, Jesse. I haven’t seen her in a couple of years. She didn’t even come to Dad’s funeral.”

  “I didn’t know he’d passed,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  When she looked at me again, I saw the same pain in her eyes that I’d seen yesterday.

  “No way you could have known,” she said. “It happened last year and it’s not like we’ve been pen pals since Hurricane Irene.” Her words were like a knife in the chest and it must have registered on my face. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “It’s okay,” I lied. “You’re under a lot of stress.”

  Her eyes found mine. “I’m also sorry for the way I treated you, for lying about Derrick, and for sneaking off in the middle of the night.”

  “No apology needed,” I said, “but thanks.”

  “Sharlee had started doing drugs the year before Dad died, mostly weed and coke.”

  Drugs, I thought. Could that be the connection?

  “Why would she be on a shrimp boat?” I asked.

  “I have no idea. But like I said, I haven’t talked to her in some time. The last straw was three months ago. She withdrew a large sum of money from Mom’s account without permission.”

  “Who’s running your dad’s business,” I asked.

  “Mom tried, but she was in over her head. I went home and together we made a pretty good go of it, but neither of us really wanted to do it. It wasn’t the same without Dad. So we sold everything.”

  “Have you ever heard the name Eugene Ballinger?”

  “No,” she replied. “Did he have something to do with it?”

  “He was the registered owner of the shrimp boat.”

  “How did she die?” Savannah asked. “Do you know? Did she suffer?”

  Telling relatives about the horrible details of their loved ones’ deaths has never been easy. Most don’t ask and don’t want to know. It was hard to tell with siblings; they wanted to know that their brother or sister had died valiantly. I decided that Savannah should be spared the truth. Call me a coward.

  “She was killed in the explosion,” I lied. “It happened near my island and I was one of the first ones there. Charlotte was already gone when I found her, but I don’t think she suffered.”

  “I just met your daughter,” she said, glancing toward the door Kim had exited through
.

  “She turned out pretty good,” I said, thanking her in my mind for accepting my statement and changing the subject. “I didn’t see her much when she was growing up. Time flew by and now she’s a woman.”

  “She’s doing well in college?”

  I grinned. “You could say that. Four-point-oh average and planning to graduate a year early.”

  “She looks a lot like you,” Savannah said. “Does your other daughter look like you, too?”

  “Eve looks more like her mother.”

  “There’s a whole side of you that I never imagined.”

  “You were barely here two weeks,” I said, and immediately regretted it.

  “I deserved that,” she said. “What I did was wrong.”

  The front door opened and when I glanced over, I saw Devon standing there. She motioned for me to follow, then stepped back outside.

  “Excuse me for just a minute,” I said, starting to rise.

  “Girlfriend?”

  “Sheriff’s detective,” I replied. Why I didn’t answer yes, I don’t know. But I didn’t.

  Stepping out the door, Devon was waiting off to the side. “I tried to call you a couple of times yesterday,” she said.

  A black Crown Vic sat idling in the parking lot. Devon’s usual partner, Joe Clark sat behind the wheel.

  “I headed offshore after dropping you off,” I said. “No signal. Is something wrong?”

  “The Coast Guard never got an updated GPS location on the wreck. I reluctantly had to tell Lieutenant Morgan about Marty’s report and the head.”

  “What’d Ben say?”

  “It’ll have to go to Internal Affairs,” she replied. “I shouldn’t be saying anything at all about it, least of all to you. Ben ordered me and Joe to conduct the initial investigation. Before IA gets it, he wants to know whether the missing evidence was Marty’s dereliction for not getting Sergeant Brady to sign for the evidence, or if Brady’s involvement points toward something else that we don’t know about.”

  “I’d start digging into Brady’s background first.”

  “Of course you would. But you’re biased; I can’t be. Who’s the blond woman?”

  I’ve been stretching the bounds of truth a lot lately, and didn’t like the taste it left in my mouth. “Her name’s Savannah Richmond,” I replied. “She and I had a short affair about nine years ago. The dead woman on the shrimp trawler was her sister and she came here to make arrangements to have her sister’s body transported home to South Carolina. She and her daughter live on their trawler, docked out back.”

  “An old girlfriend?” Devon’s eyes didn’t look accusatory, but it was a charged question. She was in cop mode.

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” I said. “She was a tourist in town. It lasted less than two weeks.”

  Devon looked inside, and I followed her gaze. Rusty and Florence had returned.

  “And the eight-year-old-looking girl?”

  “Her daughter.”

  “I see,” Devon said. “Do you know where Marty is?”

  “He was here about thirty minutes ago,” I replied. Then I remembered something. I dug into the cargo pocket of my shorts and took out the package I’d found under the false bottom.

  “I’m no expert,” I said, “but I bet this is meth.”

  Devon took the package from my hand and looked at the crystals inside the plastic bag. “Sure looks like it. Where’d you get this?”

  “I dove the shrimper again yesterday. I can give you the GPS numbers, or should I give that package and the numbers to the Coast Guard?”

  “We’ll still need to talk to Marty,” she said, ignoring my question, and looking inside once more. “He has to make an official statement. Did you find anything else?”

  “An explosive charge,” I replied. “Another boat was diving it before I got there. They removed other things that Marty and I saw, then rigged the boat to blow.”

  “What happened? Is there anything left of it?”

  “It’s intact. Or as intact as it was after blowing up and being dragged two miles. I didn’t have time to defuse it, but I managed to carry it away from the boat.”

  Devon hefted the bag in her hand. “You’re going to have to stop by the sub-station on Cudjoe Key to file a report on this. It was turned in by a civilian to county law enforcement; out of the Coast Guard’s hands. About fifteen hundred?”

  “Is that really necessary?” I asked. “Can’t I just sign something right here?”

  “That’s not the way the law works, Jesse. The Coast Guard will probably want to talk to you, as well. About disturbing their crime scene and the explosives.”

  “The Coasties wouldn’t even know where to look if Marty and I hadn’t found and dived it. And if I hadn’t been there yesterday, there wouldn’t be much left for them to look for.”

  “True,” she said. “And they may or may not be appreciative. You know how they can be.”

  “We have another stop on Big Pine before we go over to Marty’s,” she said. “If we miss him and you see him, tell him to call me. He’s not answering his cell.”

  She started to turn away, but I stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. “What’s that stuff worth?”

  “This is distribution weight,” she said, hefting the package again. “Almost half a pound. Depending on its purity, anywhere from fifteen to twenty-five thousand.”

  “Dollars?” I asked, very surprised. “I thought it was the poor man’s cocaine.”

  “It was,” she replied, walking toward the car. “It’s a lot more addictive, though. Supply and demand. This much meth is worth about twice what the same amount of coke would be.”

  I went back inside. Savannah waited at the table. I didn’t really know what else to say to her.

  “I liked your daughter,” she said, as I approached. “In another time, under different circumstances, we’d probably be friends.”

  She nodded toward the parking lot. “Did that have anything to do with Sharlee’s death?”

  “Indirectly,” I replied, straddling the chair again. “Where was Charlotte living the last time you heard from her?”

  “I didn’t exactly hear from her, but the transfer of funds she took from Mom went to a bank in Fort Myers.”

  “Was she into methamphetamine?”

  “I don’t know anything about that part of her life, but I guess it’s possible.”

  Without thinking it through, I said, “If you and Florence aren’t in a hurry to go somewhere, I’d like to show you my island.”

  She just stared at me for a moment, her eyes becoming distant and unreadable. “Right now?” she asked, gathering her things.

  Before I could reconsider my offered tour, we were walking out to her boat. Rusty gave me an odd look, when I told him we were going up to the island for a little while.

  “You’re not bringing your dog?” I asked, as we walked down the dock.

  “Woden protects the boat while we’re ashore.”

  “So his job’s not to protect you and Florence?”

  “Sometimes,” Savannah replied. “But I can take care of us just fine.”

  I helped Savannah and Florence aboard and they went straight to the fore and aft dock lines, waiting for me to start the engine. It took Florence only a couple of seconds longer than her mother to untie the dock line and coil it.

  Using the bow thruster, I spun El Cazador around and we idled slowly past the boats toward open water.

  Florence sat on the console seat between Savannah and me. “Do you know who owns that?” she asked, pointing at my plane.

  “I do,” I replied.

  She looked up at me. “You know, or you own it?”

  “That’s my plane, Island Hopper.”

  “Really?” Savannah asked. “I didn’t even know you could fly.”

  “Flew helicopters a little in the Corps,” I said. “Took some lessons a few years ago and got a license. A friend was moving and didn’t want the plane anymore. I use it sometim
es to take clients to places a boat would have a hard time getting to, or are just too far away.”

  “Like where?”

  “Fresh water lakes in the Everglades,” I said. “Cape Sable and The Ten Thousand Islands, sometimes. The Bahama Banks, Cay Sal Bank, places like that. I can mount two kayaks or canoes to the pontoons.”

  Florence showed no fear when I pushed the throttle forward as we left the canal. Cazador’s bow came up, and the boat climbed up on top of the water. Florence seemed delighted at the speed.

  “You live alone on this island of yours, Jesiah?”

  I looked over Florence’s head at Savannah, surprised at the mention of my given name.

  “Your daughter told me,” Savannah said, grinning broadly. She slapped her knee, laughing heartily. “Jesiah Smedley McDermitt.”

  I grinned at her. “Another couple lives there and helps me run the place.” She had a nice laugh.

  The world outside of the Keys was strange. Or at least it seemed so to Steve Brady, after living and working in the islands for ten years, the first seven of which were on the water. He didn’t like to go to the mainland anymore. But these days, it seemed that every time he did, he came back with a good-sized wad of cash. That’s why he was on his way up US-1 on his only day off. The lure of easy money.

  Steve’s wife had left him the previous year. Not unusual for people in law enforcement; the stress on the spouse is high every time a cop goes to work. But Steve was tied to a desk for the most part. Patti didn’t like the island life and wanted all the things that went with a lieutenant’s or a captain’s job. And she wanted regular hours and weekends. She claimed that he had no chance for advancement in his job, unless someone died or retired. It was her leaving that eventually led him to first meet the man he was on his way to see now.

  When alcohol no longer killed the pain, he’d started using prescription medications. It wasn’t long before he couldn’t function without them. His doctor would only prescribe so much for the pain he sometimes felt from an injury to his shoulder.

  But that wasn’t the pain he was self-medicating to find relief from. It was the emotional pain of knowing that his wife had been right. He was in a dead-end, nowhere job, and unless he moved to a different department, he’d remain at the desk he currently occupied until he retired as a sergeant. But Steve really liked living in the Keys. Lately, being single again had taken a fun turn. He knew it was because of the extra money, but he was having the time of his life. The notion that information he gave Ballinger might get one of his co-workers injured or killed never occurred to him.